Chinese man dies from internet gambling

A Chinese man died after gambling online for three days straight at an Internet cafe. While there have been cases of death and seizures while playing video games for extended hours. This is the first known case of Internet gambling taking a deadly toll.

The 30-year-old man fainted at an internet cafe in the southern city of Guangzhou, China on Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.

The report said that about 100 other Web surfers “left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man’s death.”

Several Chinese cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed “Internet addiction” in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the Web for days at a time.